


To Be Oneself

by cavedinwriter



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, it/its pronouns for benrey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28851075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cavedinwriter/pseuds/cavedinwriter
Summary: A character study of Benrey I did in order to get some Gender Feelings(tm) out.
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	To Be Oneself

**Author's Note:**

> Hi welcome to gender feelings with cavedinwriter.... I generally hc Benrey with he/it pronouns but in this fic it only uses it. Before you get mad at me consider that I use he/it pronouns and its none of your business <3  
> I feel a bit weird about putting this in the ship tag because it's not really about them as much as it is about Benrey, but it's relevant enough.

“What are you, Benrey?”

A simple question for a person, really, but Benrey wasn’t a person. Never had been. Was that true? It didn’t know. It couldn’t remember. All it remembered was the answer that tumbled out days or weeks or hours ago and stuck until it was the only answer.

“‘M not human.”

Not an answer. Not an answer and Benrey knew it and Gordon knew it and Black Mesa knew it, which was why they were always fucking  _ looking _ at it, always digging under its skin and peeling out things that could be categorized. Things that could be named and seen and judged. Not an answer, and Benrey  _ liked _ it.

Benrey liked it because it was the only thing it had to itself. Nobody could take the nothingness away from it, the incomprehensibility and hostility and joke-hatred-jealousy-joke cocktail that it folded up inside of itself. Nobody could tell it what it was if it wasn’t anything that could be defined. Shifting and changing at the drop of a hat, dropping away off the face of the earth just for a chance to be cared about, just for the chance to be left alone.

That wasn’t the question.

Benrey was a line and a dot and a dot and a dot repeating and circling and spread out between a beginning and an end, many times over inside of levels and built for dying. Benrey was a soft beating heart inside of metal, Benrey was the wet concrete swallowing Gordon in his dreams, Benrey was not human and it wasn’t a goddamn answer.

Gordon sighed and leaned his head back against the couch. 

Benrey snarled. Its lips were pressed closed, they were pulled back, as big as a firetruck and only pinpricks in the sheer mass of the universe. It didn’t want to hurt Gordon. It tore him apart. There was no answer, not for anything it did. No reason, no grand scheme, no joke, no plot, no feeling. There was feeling. Benrey felt, deeply. Benrey felt deeply inhuman. 

Is there a way to feel nothing?

Benrey is not the absence of things. It knows that, because it can feel. It feels hurt, it feels soft, it feels warm, it feels happy. It is not a lacking. Perhaps to be Benrey is to be a surplus, it thought to itself, to be far too much. A bitterness dragged down its throat. Yes, too much. Far too much.

“What are you, Benrey?”

A simple question. Benrey wasn’t a person. That was true. That was true and it was so true it didn’t warrant any further reflection. No more thoughts about what came before, none of that. It had a question to answer.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know. That wasn’t the question.”

“Yes it was.”

“Stop avoiding it. I hate you.”

“I know.”

“You’re not human.”

“I know.”

“You’re not real.”

“I love you.”


End file.
